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Review of Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature: An Introduction, by Maria Nikolajeva

1992 saw the publication of Perry Nodelman's Pleasures of
Children's Literature. Over its multiple printings and editions
(the newest co-edited by Mavis Reimer), Pleasures of Children's
Literature has reigned supreme in the world of children's
literature textbooks, especially those used in courses taught by
English faculty. Nodelman's approach sets it apart from the other
textbooks of its kind, as it focuses on the "pleasures" children's
texts can offer to both children and adults. However, he avoids
condescending to children, for he defines pleasure broadly,
recognizing that some children – like some adults – take
pleasure in more than plot, more than character. So it's hard out
there, as they say, for textbook authors, as their efforts are
immediately compared – often unfavorably – to Nodelman's
touchstone of a book. One suspects that Pleasures is the
reason we don't have more children's literature textbooks positioned
from within the discipline of English Studies (as opposed to
Education). Imagine the number of readers' reports that include the
sentence, "Nodelman's already done it – and he did it better."

So I was understandably excited when I heard of the release of Maria Nikolajeva's
Aesthetic Approaches to Children's Literature (2005). In Pleasures,
Nodelman and Reimer – while they attend to aesthetic matters –
adopt a cultural studies perspective. The title of Nikolajeva's offering,
however, suggests a book that organizes around aesthetic questions specifically.
Readers of ImageTexT – especially those of us who are teachers
– would no doubt find this sort of inquiry eminently useful, as there
are all too few textbooks which wrestle with the tricky issue of aesthetic
value and the ideological roots of such value. Unfortunately, Aesthetic
Approaches to Children's Literature fails to deliver on its promises,
and suffers by comparison to Nodelman and Reimer's effort in every way except
for price: weighing in at $47.00, it is $17.00 cheaper than Pleasures.
Nikolajeva's promising title is misleading. By aesthetics, she seems to mean
structure, as in structuralism, and, even more narrowly,
narrative theory. Despite its title, Nikolajeva's book does not focus
on aesthetic issues. It is a book on narratology (and a good one – if
you find that theoretical approach interesting), but one that largely sidesteps
the questions that the last half-century of theorizing has raised. The book
is a largely tacit repudiation of post-structuralism and post-modernism, a
repudiation of cultural studies and the political implications of the same.
Ultimately, it is a return to structuralism (disguised as aesthetics).

For instance, in her preface, Nikolajeva notes that "students
gladly accept critical theory and the analytical tools it offers as
long as they are presented in an accessible and meaningful way, that
is, not theory for its own sake, but theory as support for the
concrete study of literature" (vi). She later uses the word "toolkit"
for theory, suggesting that theory offers simply a set of "tools"
useful in the discussion and analysis of something unproblematically
called "literature," or, in this case, "children's literature."
Nikolajeva sidesteps the fact that a great deal of theory questions
both the idea of literature (with a capital L) and the cultural
assumptions that undergird such a category; indeed, she sidesteps the
fact that the "literary" study of children's literature, like the
study of comics, emerges from such theory and the refiguring of the
canon such theories allowed. The introduction asks "whether children's
literature is different from any other kind of literature, what we
normally call adult, or general, or mainstream literature" (xi). The
contested nature of "what we normally call adult, or general, or
mainstream literature" is ignored, as is the contested nature of
"children's literature" itself. In a later chapter, "The Aesthetic of
the Medium," she begins promisingly:

Today children's
literature exists very much on the crossroads of different media:
film, theater, television, video, music, computer games, and so
on. The spin-off products, including merchandise (toys, clothes,
office supplies, and the like), often play a more important role in
the promotion of a book than the book itself. The area is much too
large to be covered in merely one chapter; besides, many questions
will take us away from the field of children's literature into culture
and media studies. (223)

Ignoring the
fact that theories of intertextuality question the easy line between a
book and its "spin-off products," I'm unsure that "the field of
children's literature" and that of "culture and media studies" are so
easily distinguished. Certainly, readers of ImageTexT
– and more broadly readers of comics studies and
interdisciplinary word/image studies – have a legitimate
interest in testing that distinction as well.

Similarly, she does not appreciate that some Marxist theories have
alerted us to the fact that the toolkit model implies a liberal
humanist perspective on literary studies, just as they have called
into question the primacy of this perspective. Furthermore, as Terry
Eagleton points out in his own textbook, An Introduction to
Literary Theory, the liberal humanist perspective is often
"less liberal than it looks at first sight [, … as] a reader with
strong ideological commitments is likely to be an inadequate one"
(69). Although Eagleton is discussing here Wolfgang Iser's belief that
literature should "transform" readers, his insights are appropriate in
this context as well: the toolkit approach (so commonly used even in
graduate theory classes) suggests that theory is simply a means to an
end, and that end is the analysis of something unproblematically
called "literature"; perhaps more vexing, this approach also
reinscribes a stable, liberal humanist notion of the reader. As
Eagleton writes, "Everything about the reading subject is up for
question in the act of reading, except what kind of (liberal) subject
it is: these ideological limits can be in no way criticized, for then
the whole model would collapse" (69). Again, readers of comics
scholarship, with its abiding interest in cultural studies, including
audience studies, are likely to find Nikolajeva's assumed reader too
narrowly straitjacketed and her model of criticism too beholden to an
old-fashioned ideal.

In her conclusion, Nikolajeva instructs her readers how to choose
an "appropriate" critical method of analysis. She suggests that some
methods are more "suitable" than others, noting that the
"prerequisites" we should take into account when making this choice
all involve "appropriateness," as in, "Is the method appropriate from
the point of view of your material?" (270). She notes, "In the
natural sciences, this [toolkit approach] corresponds to creating a
theoretical equation and building adequate equipment to conduct an
experiment" (270). Here we see a reliance on empiricism, suggesting
that we can somehow discover which method is a more or less
appropriate tool for analysis, that there are testable –
provable – answers to these questions. Thus, we are taken back
to an earlier era of criticism which justified itself in scientific
terms. Nikolajeva does allow that there may be value in using a method
that initially seems inappropriate for a certain text, writing, "It is
[…] a greater challenge to adapt a method to something else than it
was originally proposed for" (270). However, she holds onto the idea
that all of these methods are only useful and appropriate for the
analysis of literary texts, isolatable, knowable texts that theory
assists us in "examining." Nikolajeva elides the fact that many
contemporary theories are antithetical to the project of "examining"
literary texts, that they are not analogous to a "bulldozer" or a
"tiny blade" or a "divining rod" (270). (Similarly, I might add, she
forgets the interdisciplinary nature of much contemporary theory
– especially the cultural studies model familiar to readers of
ImageText.) She writes, "Before we have decided what the
purpose of our work will be, we cannot pick the necessary instrument"
(271). The poststructuralist tradition, for instance, would deny the
easy scientism of such assertions.

What's more, Nikolajeva's view of readerly pleasure (and purpose)
is disconcertingly narrow, especially when compared to the much
broader view found in Pleasures of Children's
Literature. She writes that "basically, we read fiction because
we are interested in human nature and human relationships as revealed
through fictive characters" (145). In a textbook ostensibly about
aesthetics, this assertion comes across as particularly
problematic. Who is the "we" here? Have all humans in all times and
all places really engaged with fiction because they are interested in
"human nature" or "human relationships"? Are there not other concerns
which might trump such interests? Might readers – or auditors,
since many forms of fiction are oral in nature – also take
pleasure or find interest in, say, aesthetic concerns – textures
of language (syntax, vocabulary, music, etc.), narrative voice,
metaphor, structural complexity, intertexuality, and a host of other
features? And what are we to make of narratives whose means of
delivery are at least partly pictorial in nature? Are the pleasures of
picture books and comics, for example, reducible to Nikolajeva's
formula?

Herein lies a final, overarching difficulty with Nikolajeva's
textbook. Just as its underlying theoretical position is a bit
old-fashioned, so is its voice. Nodelman's text is opinionated and
argumentative, thoroughly positioned and at times confrontational. Yet
his text foregrounds these facts, asking students to engage with his
ideas, to refute them, to discover his own blind spots. Nikolajeva's
text, however, is also opinionated and thoroughly positioned, but
never overtly confrontational – in fact, she uses the royal "we"
throughout the book, and at the end of the chapters, she encourages
readers to "go further," as if it's always onward and upward, as if
"we" are always building on previous, rock solid ideas instead of
discrediting or rewriting insufficient ones. So, when Nikolajeva
concludes with sentiments like, "no theory is better than any other,"
I raise an eyebrow. Surely she doesn't really believe this, and surely
her book would be better if she did not pretend to.

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